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Mohammad Bassam (Sam) Helwany

Sam Helwany

Biography

Dr. Helwany has 20 years of teaching and research experience in the geotechnical engineering area. He taught courses in various areas of civil engineering including statics, dynamics, structural analysis, soil mechanics, foundation engineering, advanced foundation engineering, advanced soil mechanics, soil-structure interaction, soil modeling, finite element method in geotechnical engineering, designing with geosynthetics, and even fluid mechanics! He enjoys teaching as well as research.

Soil-structure interaction is Dr. Helwany’s main area of research and he has performed many funded interdisciplinary research projects related to soil reinforcement, soil dynamics, soil-structure interaction with high-rate loading conditions. He is currently working on near-surface geothermal energy where he is the Principal Investigator of a fundamental research project on the effects of heat cycles, caused by energy piles, on soil strength and on soil-pile interface strength (funded by the National Science Foundation). He is also investigating the use of a new type of energy piles as a storage medium for wind and solar energy associated with microgrids (funded by Research Growth Initiatives-UWM). Both projects are being done in collaboration with his UWM associates from the electrical engineering department and the mechanical engineering. The projects also include collaboration with faculty from EPFL-Switzerland, University of Alaska, and Virginia Tech. He has also conducted research on a new pile foundation system for "Mega" tubular wind towers (funded by We Energies).

Dr. Helwany is the author of Applied Soil Mechanics with Abaqus Applications. The book shows how to apply the finite element method to solve soil mechanics problems. He has used these principles in pragmatic solutions in conjunction with projects run by the Air Force Office for Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT), the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).